April 8, 2008
Thanks to both old friend Linda and new friend Patrick for these two tags. The topics are so closely related for me that I can’t really separate them. A couple of these are quotes, but I’ll leave them unattributed as brain teasers.
1) For every person in the world, there exists one perfect book waiting to be found.
2) It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
3) It’s important to know what the t-shirt you’re wearing is really saying.
4) Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
5) A monkey with a computer is still a monkey.
6) And perhaps this sums it all up for me:
For the Children
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
— Gary Snyder
Tagged, with absolute permission to decline (I abhor chain letters), for both or either the Passion Quilt (follow Linda’s link for rules) and This I Believe (Patrick’s):

April 9th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
[...] I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how to respond to Dina’s challenge. I thought about mirroring Peter over at Chalkdust101, but decided to kinda go my own way. So, in [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Thanks, I am going to decline. For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing and rewriting my own version of the NPR essay to share with the creative writing class. (Why do I dislike the word “essay” so much?)The draft is weighing heavily right now, and I need to concentrate on it. By the way, I love your #5.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
@Susan– when it’s finished, do post it, would you? Would love to read it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Hi Dina: If I could get students to understand even a small part of the Declaration of Interdependence (David Suzuki Foundation), then I would feel like some “progress” was being made. I think it’s a good beginning point to start exploring our role(s) in a larger system, and to maybe, infuse some humility into our species.
Thanks for tagging me and I apologize in advance for not playing right.
Really enjoyed “Blossoms and Walls”. So rich!